The national and religious
limitations were still too marked and hostile to permit a free survey
over the historic field. The eighteenth century, though it opened with
a bloody war, was essentially peaceful in spirit: governments made
war, but men and nations longed for rest. The increased interest in
the past was shown by the publication nearly contemporary of the great
historic collections of Rymer (A.D. 1704), Leibnitz (1707), and
Muratori (1723). Before the middle of the century the historic muse
had abundant oil to feed her lamp. Still the lamp would probably not
have been lighted but for the singular pass to which French thought
had come.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 11: Mezeray's great history of France is next to valueless
till he reaches the sixteenth century, that was a period bordering on
his own. Thuanus deals with contemporary events.]
From the latter years of Louis XIV. till the third quarter of the
eighteenth century was all but closed, France had a government at once
so weak and wicked, so much below the culture of the people it
oppressed, that the better minds of the nation turned away in disgust
from their domestic ignominy, and sought consolation in contemplating
foreign virtue wherever they thought it was to be found; in short,
they became cosmopolitan.
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